11-Year-Old's 'Stick Figure' Drawing Helps Cops Catch Burglar

When police showed up at Rebecca DePietro's Connecticut home a few months ago asking if anyone had seen a suspicious person around the neighborhood, "I was like, yeah I can draw a picture of him," DePietro tells NBC Connecticut. But, she says, "it wasn’t like the best picture, it was just a head and some legs and I thought, 'Oh he’s probably just going to crumple it up and throw it out.'" Instead, police used the sketch—NBC says they "superimposed" the image and matched it up with a picture of the suspect—and it led them to a man who ultimately confessed to 10 local burglaries.

DePietro was honored at an event Thursday night. "For us to take that sketch and match it up, it was remarkable," the Stratford police chief says. "Maybe she’s part of our next generation of detectives." DePietro adds, "I have to give a lot of credit to my art teacher," per 9 News. One of the burglaries the suspect confessed to was at the DePietros' home. "It was kind of, like, payback," says Rebecca's dad. "Like, 'You did this,' and my daughter's drawing kind of resolved the issue." (Another suspected burglar had the misfortune of leaving his keys behind in the home.)